Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Mere Christianity
The "trilemma" of Lord, liar, or lunatic; the moral law as evidence of a moral Lawgiver; the common Christianity beneath denominational difference
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Mere Christianity |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Both |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Both |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Mere Christianity
Lewis distinguishes God's eternity (Boethian, simultaneous possession of unending life) from created time. Within time, free moral choice is genuine — Lewis is decidedly non-deterministic in Book III on the moral life. The Christian story has a real temporal shape: creation, fall, incarnation, eschaton.
Space
Mere Christianity
Standard Christian cosmological background: a created, substantival, finite-but-vast space within which God acts without himself being spatially located. The Space Trilogy develops this imaginatively; Mere Christianity assumes it.
Matter
Mere Christianity
Created, good, finite, conserved. Lewis is emphatic that Christianity is not the spiritualist denigration of matter that critics sometimes accuse: the incarnation, the sacraments, and the resurrection of the body are all bodily.
Observer
Mere Christianity
The Lewisian observer is embodied (with the soul as the image of God in the body), plural, actively moral, genuinely free in the libertarian sense. Knowledge is immediate in moral conscience (the "Law of Human Nature" of Book I) and revelational in saving knowledge. The metaphysical agency is personal — Mere Christianity's God is the personal God of orthodox creedal Christianity. Moral authority is scripture, mediated by reason and classical Christian tradition.
Energy
Mere Christianity
Not Lewis's topic; created, substantival, conserved, irreversibly dissipative in fallen time, awaiting renewal in the new creation.
Information
Mere Christianity
God's knowledge is total, eternal, and personal; the inscribed record of creation and redemption is fully present to him. Personal information is unambiguously conserved — Mere Christianity affirms a robust personal immortality and bodily resurrection in the orthodox creedal sense.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The famous Lord-liar-or-lunatic trilemma has been criticised as a false trichotomy by both Christian and non-Christian philosophers; the option "legend" (the historical Jesus did not actually claim what the Gospels report him as claiming) is not adequately engaged. Mere Christianity's tone — irenic, common-sense, accessible — is also occasionally philosophically light: serious philosophers of religion (both for and against orthodox belief) often find the arguments compressed past the point where their force can be fully felt. The book's strength is not analytic depth but its remarkable success in presenting orthodox Christianity in a form intelligible to twentieth-century lay readers.